


Soot Stains

by Rose_Lattes



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, heavy spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 23:09:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19799671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rose_Lattes/pseuds/Rose_Lattes
Summary: Heavy spoilers for Episode 69!While sprinting across the bridge, back to the surface world, Caleb loses himself to the voices of madness and doubt. A bloodied Jester is there to pull him away from is own flames.Made for Widojest Week. Day 6: Fire & Ice.





	Soot Stains

The bridge swung. Its chains, suspending them over the abyss, clattered against one another in rapid waves of metal on metal. Whispers, once haunting, now taunting, swam around the chasm like serpents readying for an attack. Nott sprinted past Caleb, pumping her arms. The scent of alcohol wafted after her, joining the heavy musk of fire embedded in Caleb’s nostrils, for a nauseating concoction of smells. 

Their blood-soaked boots ground against the surface of the bridge as the Mighty Nein lengthened their strides. The chorus of whispers surged, and behind Caleb, Beauregard went limp. Fjord, with his burned flesh and open wound, attempted to pick her up. Hearing the disruption, Caduceus pushed past Caleb to backtrack across the bridge. The thin firbolg cradled his blightstaff in the crook of his arm and strung his free hand beneath Beau’s limp body. Together, Fjord and Caduceus lifted the human and pushed forward. The tips of Beau’s shoes scraped against the bridge.

The unit of three passed Caleb’s stationary form. The whispers lashed out again, scalding and sinister. A blister burned Caleb’s throat, and he surrendered to the mystic tongues. “Why didn’t you help,” someone asked. The voice was hazy, smoked over, and lost between true and false. “Why didn’t you do more?”

“You could have stopped this, you could have finished it quickly,” another voice said, this one low and far too close to recognizable.

Caleb buckled at the hip. His faculties wore thin, and the mythical whispers threatened to drag him into the abyss, but he relented. Raising a burned hand, he punched himself in the face. One curled fist cast the taunting hisses out of his mind, and he took shallow breaths, not wishing to inhale too deeply.

Unsteady and not truly himself, Caleb took the bridge one step at a time. He could see the end, the bodies of his companions waiting for him but a sudden wave of voices hit him, and he pivoted on his toe, ready to run back into the arms of the chasm. “Caleb, no, no, no,” Jester shouted. She grabbed the back of his coat and tugged him towards the end of the bridge. Spiraling and lost to the manipulation of the whispers, Caleb collided into Jester’s body. She smelt like fire.

Jester held him for a moment. She seized his biceps, a tender grasp, not too strong but not weak enough for him to break away. He could see her mouth moving, an inquiry if he was capable of continuing, but as if he were four rooms away, he could not hear the exotic cadence of her accent or the inevitable fear attached to her words. He heard nothing except the sound of flames.

They stopped before the door to the spiral stairs. Caleb, faded and vacant, was pushed aside as Nott scurried to the lock. She rasped her hand along the surface of the door, waited a moment, and then unlocked it. The door opened with a lethargic sway and a mist escaped with a gentleness unfitting for the moment. His companions paused. Their faces watched the staircase with apprehension. Finally, Jester stepped forward. Her lips moved again, and Caleb desperately wished he could hear her. She nodded once, the tattered collar of her dress dug into the soft skin of her chin. She led their ascent up the stairs.

Between Jester and Caduceus, Caleb slowly traversed the dark stairwell. He traced his fingers along the curved wall, relishing in the details of the texture. Out of the dense mist, a face, grotesque and rabid, attacked Jester. The fire bolt left Caleb before he could stop it, it was an instinctual, primal reaction he was ashamed to have no control over. The orange flame whizzed through the air, and the floating face flinched but did not fall.

Jester brought her shield up, just in time to catch the misty creature’s body as it slammed into her. It reared back, and Jester made the innocent mistake of letting her shield falter. The monster flew forward and pinned her against the wall. She grimaced and looking more so annoyed than hurt; she shoved it away from her body.

Her mouth opened into a snarl and a breath caught in Caleb’s scalding throat. He leaned away from the woman, colliding into Cad’s steady chest. Blood dripped from the corner of Jester’s mouth, her eyes, a blinding blue, pinched as pure rage sharpened her features. She screamed, and Caleb shuddered. Noise crashed into him like an angry wave against the rocks. A brittle chill locked him in place, and he could feel every inch of his skin rise with the birth of goosebumps. The monster’s face ruptured as shards of ice, sharp and translucent exploded from beneath its skin.

Jester’s scream bounced from wall to wall. Fragments of the creature’s body fell to the floor, adding a whimsical chime beneath the chorus of anguished echos. The mist dissipated, and with the threat gone, Jester took a moment to find herself. She pressed her back against the wall. Her lips parted, and her breath came in shallow pants. Caleb watched, cognizant and back in his body as the raw anguish melted from the tiefling’s eyes, leaving a vacantness he never expected to see in the woman.

They did not have time to wait for Jester to regain control over her emotions; they all understood that, but nobody wanted to be the first to break the moment. From the base of the stairwell, something bashed against the door.

“Jess, you okay?” Beau asked, itching to move forward.

Jester’s breaths turned to gasping sobs, but her eyes remained hollow. She turned to Beau and tilted her chin: a small indication that she wasn’t.

Just as she did for him on the bridge, Caleb touched her arm. Soot stained the soft fabric. His touch was gentle, and he guided her to him. She finally closed her mouth as she met his damaged gaze. He was tired, and so was she, and they were both about to fall apart at the seams. Caleb did not say anything; he did not try. He knew the words could not come, his raw throat, scalded by smoke and blood, would permit him no syllables.

Jester’s head nodded, back and forth, back and forth, as she started to rock herself gently. While she was looking into Caleb’s dry eyes, she showed him nothing, but she must have found something substantial within his despondent expression because she locked her jaw and pushed herself away from the wall. She continued up the stairs.

Only once they exited the hidden passageway did they stop to breathe. Fjord crumbled and fell to the gray ground of the Barbed Fields. Caduceus rushed to his aid. With her last ounce of energy, Jester spun on her heel and raised the symbol to close the door to the hidden passage. As the door sealed shut, her shoulders slumped. She wilted.

Nott took a long sip from her flask. She lifted the metal container to Beau, who happily took the goblin up on her offer.

Caleb searched his pockets and retrieved his canteen. It did not hold alcohol, and he was glad. Water, fresh and untainted by the day’s events, swayed within the body of the bottle. Caleb unscrewed the cap and handed it to Jester.

She shook her head and held out her hand to decline.

Caleb rotated his wrist and kept his arm extended. “Drink,” he croaked.

His voice trimmed her final thread, and she crumbled. She took his canteen, her fingers nudged his own, and he noted how cold she was. Her brows fluctuated between emotions, and he was sure she was trying not to cry. After taking a quick sip, she handed the water back to him.

Beneath the mid-day sun, he could see every bruise and every scratch which graced her pale blue skin. He could also see where his flames had licked the hem of her skirt. She was often burned after their fights, caught in the crossfire of his attacks. Small holes decorated the fabric at her shoulders, references to past embers. She never spoke to him about the destruction of her wardrobe, and for that, he wasn’t sure if he was thankful or not. Caleb wiped his hands down the length of his trousers.

Jester was looking at him with a vacant sadness, and Caleb pinched his brow together, asking her what was immediately wrong. She lifted her hand to him and nudged the canteen in his grasp. “Drink,” she said.

Testing the quality of his throat, Caleb took a deep breath, one which Jester mistook for a reluctant sigh. “It will make you feel better,” she said. Deeming his skin healthy enough to handle water, Caleb took a sip of the clear liquid. Just as expensive alcohol would, it burned as it went down, but eventually, it soothed him. “She did it,” Jester mumbled. “She betrayed us.”

“She was not herself,” Caleb offered, but he knew Jester understood. He realized later; he had said it more for his sake than hers.

Jester understood far more than people gave her credit for, and it was not Caleb’s place to reiterate bad news, so instead of further echoing their catastrophe of an expedition, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into a gentle embrace. She was cold. He rubbed his hand along her arm, exactly where he had touched her on the stairs. He wiped the soot off her dress. Instead of trying to heal one another, Caleb and Jester simply stood together, grieving within each other's presence.

Yasha’s face. Fjord’s death-laden eyes. Nott’s flower. Beau’s screams. Cad’s disquietude. Jester’s numbness.

The wall of fire.

It was too much, far too much, and Caleb’s chest tightened. His mind struggled with the trauma and the anxiety, encouraged by his generous use of fire, bubbled between his heart and stomach. He would soon be boiled alive. Attached to him, Jester fought her own battles. She turned into him and pressed her head into his filthy shirt. The reminder of her presence broke his line of thought. A chill raced up his spine, and he focused on the details of her company. Between the layers of clothes dividing them, Caleb could still feel the coolness of her body, a comfortable temperature beneath the heat of the blaring sun. He could hear her exhaling, where the air hit his shirt in a raspy death. She was filthy, and he supposed he was too. He could see blood in her hair, drying along her scalp. He noticed a few strands of silver among her navy locks. He counted them.

With a deep breath, one that filled his entire body and rectified his arrhythmic heartbeat, Caleb brought his head down upon hers. He burrowed his face into the top of her head, extremely comforted to find that she no longer smelt of fire.


End file.
